The battle to save the critically endangered swift parrot has switched to the forests of the south-east mainland these chilly winter months. Birdwatchers have been fanning out across country Victoria and New South Wales to count numbers of migrating parrots in their wintering grounds.
The swift parrot breeds exclusively in Tasmania before crossing Bass Strait as winter grips their home state.
The population of the parrot is undergoing a catastrophic decline, with numbers believed to be as low as 750 birds from an estimated 2000 a few years ago.
The crash in number has been attributed to factors in Tasmania including the clearance of the swift parrots’ preferred blue gum habitat and predation by an introduced marsupial, the sugar glider.
On the mainland, the focus is now moving away from the old-growth forests where the parrots have traditionally spent the autumn and winter months. A review of previous bird counts has revealed that in recent years the swift parrots have been leaving their established wintering grounds for other areas not used before. There has been a shift from previous strongholds in the box-ironbark forests of central-western Victoria and these are now used only occasionally by the large flocks seen previously.
Casual sightings by mainland birders reveal the parrots are becoming more prevalent elsewhere in winter, including forests along the South Coast of NSW.
Ironically, some of these forests are subject to the same logging pressures that have been seen in Southern Tasmania in the past 20 years. Compounding this is a suggestion that the swift parrots are changing areas in response to climate change, which might be altering the flowering patterns in favoured trees.
As part of the mainland survey, birdwatchers are not just setting out to count the birds. For the first time last year the flowering period of trees important to the parrots were mapped and this program is being extended this year.
The data gathered will assist researchers to match the arrival and departure of the parrots to when trees are in flower and nectar is available in given areas.
The swift parrot depends on pollen and nectar from winter-flowering eucalypts between the months of April and October.
Back in Tasmania, the plight of the species was highlighted in a report, On the Edge of Extinction, published earlier this year, which laid out a far-reaching conservation plan. It suggested that, with strategic planning and a reduction in the legislated saw-log quota for the forest industry, the parrot could be saved.
The report, compiled by Birdlife Australia, the Wilderness Society and the Tree Projects, said that under its plan only seven per cent of the state forestry available for logging by Sustainable Forestry Tasmania would be surrendered and there could be benefits that make the state enterprise financially viable.
All the while numbers of the “swifties” remain in freefall. It is under threat both home and away.